Re: [ietf-smtp] Possible cont4ibution to moving forward with RFC5321bis SMTP

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 12/30/19 10:58 AM, Laura Atkins wrote:

>
>> On 30 Dec 2019, at 15:24, Keith Moore <[e-mail] 
>> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>
>> On 12/30/19 8:31 AM, Laura Atkins wrote:
>>
>>> 30% of email addresses on a marketing list go bad every year. It 
>>> doesn’t seem that changing email addresses is that problematic.
>>
>> Of course it is problematic, because any email address that is 
>> changed for that reason cannot be used as stable contact info for use 
>> between friends and colleagues. And this degrades the utility of email.
>
> This has been the case since 1999.
So addressing the issue is clearly long overdue.

>> Of those 30%, I wonder how many of those addresses were addresses 
>> that people intended to use as stable addresses in the first place.   
>> I wonder how many people obtain "throwaway" addresses specifically 
>> for the purpose of disclosing in contexts where they seem likely to 
>> be exploited by marketers, while reserving other addresses for use 
>> for mail that they want to get.
>
> There has been published research on this. Which goes back to what 
> Dave was saying - you really need to understand what has been done 
> before you start proposing solutions. I have a copy of the ..pdf, but 
> you can search google to find it, too. The title is  "ISPs and Spam: 
> The Impact of Spam on Customer Retention and Acquisition," 
> Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn. June 14, 1999.

Thanks for this and other references.   I certainly agree that I need to 
survey the literature.   But it's not necessary to survey the literature 
to understand that spam is a huge problem and that existing solutions 
are inadequate.

(I assume this is your reference for the 30% figure also?)

>> But yes, I'm aware that one of the ways that people deal with spam is 
>> by changing email addresses. If spam as experienced by ordinary 
>> people were not so bad, causing them to change email addresses as a 
>> way of dealing with it, email would be more useful.
>
> In 1999, the volume of spam was a tiny fraction of what it is today. 
> And, yet, it was bad enough to cause 30% of people to abandon their 
> email addresses.

And yet, a lot has changed since 1999, so the conditions that caused 30% 
of the people to abandon email addresses then may not be the same 
conditions that exist now, even if that 30% figure were about the same 
today as then.   (but do we even know that?)

Keith